Former New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas has accepted Florida International’s offer to coach its basketball team, a source close to the situation told ESPN.com’s Andy Katz.

Full disclosure: He has since fallen from my grace, of course. But during his playing days as a Pitston, I admired the strength, cunning, talent and courage it took for a 6-foot player to dominate games in the NBA. Allen Iverson came later, and came differently (playing me-first, let’s see how many times I can make the All Star team -type of basketball), but never really won anything of significance.

It’ll be a long time before we see another Isiah Thomas (unless of course Chris Paul is the next coming). But, man….for a Hall-of-Famer to go from legend, to mediocre coach, to terrible executive, to “ethically challenged” ex-executive, to now coach of a tiny program at a small college…that’s not the career trajectory he hoped for when he retired from the NBA, to be sure.